Favourite

This week must have been my favourite, because our group finally got to present our work in front of the class on Thursday. We had gotten a task to come up with some topic that we would teach to our classmates and we decided to create a lesson about blogging, since it's a current topic for us considering this digi marketing course that we have going on.
But before I get into our presentation on Thursday, let me just say a few words about Monday's class. On Monday we had another guest speaker Tomasz Odrobinski, who told us a little bit about his career and the company that he has. I thought it was interesting to hear his story, since he was originally from Poland, but had worked a long career in Finland.






And on Thursday was the time to hold some presentations. Our team was very excited about it, since we had promised to present our "lesson about blogging" to the class. We had prepared an 8 minute long video (which we had filmed and edited on Tuesday) and a concise prezi slide show to go with it and sum up some of the main points of our topic - blogging. We had so much fun presenting and were really proud of our work with the video and the whole outcome of the presentation. Anna, Ilkka and Marjo all seemed to like our work and it felt really good to hear some positive and encouraging feedback, since we had really put our heart and soul into the whole thing. Here's a link to the video we made (click!).

Some of the other teams also presented on Thursday and I thought it was nice to see others work too. First Pate and Otto showed a slide show and a long video about their proejct with the sports clothing brand Puma. The guys had been on a Puma tour all around Finland promoting Puma's new football shoes, that people got to try on during the tour. The video the guys showed us was really great and it visualized alot of things for me after hearing the story of the tour through the slide show.

We also got to see how to create a Linked In -profile, when one of the teams held a little "guidance tour" through a video they had created. I thought it was a nice idea to go through the steps of creating an account to Linked In, because it's a very important channel to i.e. network with people in business life.





Team "case garage" told us about LaureaES and Nordic Business Forum, that were - to be honest - not so familiar to me. I mean, yes I had heard of them, but didn't really know that much more. So thanks to this team, I learned some new things for sure! They told us about Entrepreneur Tuesdays that are held usually in Laurea Leppävaara campus, Pitch & Beer sessions that you can pitch your business ideas in and the live stream session of Nordic Business Forum event, that will be held on Laurea Tikkurila's campus. We also got to hear some information of some of the great names that will be speaking in Nordic Business Forum event, that will take place in Messukeskus in a couple of weeks. For example Mette Lykke, Simon Sinek, Björn "Nalle" Wahlroos, John C. Maxwell and Garry Kasparov will be speaking there. I didn't know that Laurea arranges the possibility to go see and hear the speakers live from one of our campuses - that is so great and - considering the student budget - a lot cheaper way than to buy a ticket to the actual event. Wow, I gotta say.

All in all, a great week to end the first part of the course. As I understood, next week we will start collaboration with some companies that have been selected to each team. Although our team will do the collaboration with a company that is one of our team mates, Hannah's, friends company. Or actually I think it is her aunts or something like that, but anyways. I'm excited for the new things to come. Let's see what the new week has to offer!

-Laura

Feelings about the 3rd week

picture: Faysal Hasan

On third week we talked about international marketing and cultural differences. We were shown the iceberg model, which demonstrates that every person has something underneath, that others don't know. Same applies to cultures - there are always things that us, externals, don't know. During the lectures, Anna emphasized on how we shouldn't assume that people from other cultures think and act the same way as we do. For example people in Japan greet each other very differently than we do over here in Finland. That is why in marketing, it is very important to take the cultural differences in notion.

On Monday we also had a guest speaker, Lynn-Marie Sederlöf-Airisto, who was an original Finn, but had lived in America for almost her whole life. She told us about marketing and her journey with it - she had worked in multiple positions that had something to do with marketing. I thought it was so interesting to hear about her work experience and to have a lecture from someone who speaks very good, native English.

picture: Faysal Hasan

For Thursday we had a couple of group tasks, that we were supposed to prepare. The other one was for our guest speaker, who wanted out help to develop her business. The other one was to prepare a presentation of some culture that we got to choose as groups. On Thursday we spent time on viewing the presentations that the groups had prepared and in the end of the day some groups went to do the "Digi Small Talk".

It was an interesting week and I think the next one will be as interesting and nice as this one. Or maybe even better...

-Laura

My cultural baggage

Here is my cultural baggage. Some things that are important to me and some background information of where I come from and what I appreciate.

-Laura

Pitch

A week has passed and this time I'm here to post a video of my elevator pitch. The job I'm applying in the video is to be a wellness coach, that coaches people to exercise, make healthier choices every day and overall to be more aware of their well-being.

My dream would be to combine business studies with my personal trainer degree and start my own business, that would focus on both physical and mental wellness, one day.


Th second week we talked about personal branding and what things should be taken into consideration when branding yourself. "It's not what you know, not even who you know, but who knows you and what Google says about you", that really matters. It is important to create a good brand of yourself by i.e. putting up nice pictures, talking nicely about others and yourself.

We also talked about social marketing and marketing communication. The lesson emphasized on how it's important to remember that it's usually not about WHAT you say, but actually, HOW you say it. You can say nice things and sound angry, when the message to the other person is totally different compared to if you said nice things with a gentle voice. It is so very important - especially when doing business - that you remember to use the right tone when communicating and that you know how to behave. What also links to this is that you remember to use the right body language. The non-verbal language is something that actually messages more information about you than the verbal language.

Off to start the third week now!

-Laura

First week of digital marketing course

Excitement and enthusiasm. That's what I felt after coming back to school from a long summer break on Monday. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect from this starting school year - or to be precise, this starting digital marketing course - but after the first lecture, I knew it was gonna be a good one.

When Ilkka started lecturing in English, I was a little confused, but really excited at the same time. "Would we really be speaking English throughout this whole course?" I thought. And luckily, the answer was: yes, we would.



The digital marketing course focuses on digitalization and it's current issues that we are and will be facing in the future. Based on the couple of lectures we've had so far, the course seems very interesting and useful, as the world keeps changing and becoming more and more digital every day. I am excited about everything that's about to come and all the tasks we're about to do. I think it's a great idea for the students to write a blog during the course, because blogs are a very big part of our life today, and they are becoming more effective when it comes to making decisions of for example purchasing a product or reserving a table from a restaurant etc.



So all in all, I am excited about all that's about to come. I have a great team with me, and I'm sure we will do some great things together and make the most out of this course.

-Laura